Clafoutis aux prunes - Limousin batter pudding with plums. Gluten-free version.

A clafoutis [pr. klafuti] is essentially a fruit tart without pastry, which comes from the Limousin region of France, famous for its enamels, porcelain and beef cattle. There are other similar recipe regional desserts and probably as equally well-known is the far breton, which as Brittany is just around the corner from us here, I will be posting soon.

Although often made with cherries, a clafoutis can be made with a wide variety of fruits and also as a savoury dish. In the following recipe I'll be making a gluten-free version with some 'quetsch', which are large damson-like plums, these are from a friend's tree.  I will also shortly be posting a savoury version of this recipe and one for small individual tarts. I will be making the latter with all purpose flour/plain flour but which obviously could also be made by following my gluten free recipe below or with your own favourite gluten-free choice for the flour.

I have eaten clafoutis on a couple of occasions in restaurants and have found it too sweet and heavy. That is because it is often made with non-traditional sweet cherries, in my opinion it needs the 'bite' that tart varieties of fruit can give. I also think it needs a really good whisking up when the milk goes in and I also believe a fine, light flour such as arrowroot helps to lift the batter. In addition, I thought the mix needed some 'fat' with which to carry the the flavours, although using raw Normandie dairy, helps a lot.

Ingredients

Plum halves to cover the bottom of dish

80g (3oz) of potato flour

20g ( ¾oz) of arrowroot

80g (3oz) of sugar

300ml of milk (I use raw local creamy milk from Normandy cows)
2 eggs (or 4 bantam eggs)

1 table spoon of melted coconut oil or butter

50g (1 ¾oz) of ground almonds

Optional - Rapadura (raw cane sugar) for sprinkling on the plums.

Cooking times

30 to 40 mins or until the top is well set and golden at 180°C or 350°F

Method

Butter your pie dish generously and place upon it, cut face downwards, the halves of plums with the stone removed. Use enough plums to cover the dish, I'm using a 25cm or 10" square, with an internal depth of 25mm or 1". 

(Optional) Sprinkle with a little rapadura (raw cane sugar). This will give a little caramel touch to the plums, which are quite tart and I'm using less sugar in the batter than would be used traditionally.

Place all your dry ingredients in a bowl but keep back a little sugar for sprinkling on the clafoutis when it comes from the oven. Mix well.

Add the melted coconut oil (or butter) and mix again.

Make a well in the mix and add eggs, incorporate by bringing the dry ingredients gradually in towards the centre. You can do this by hand or with a beater if you wish. Beat well to obtain a smooth paste.

Add milk slowly, whisking all the time to obtain an homogeneous batter. This is a thin batter - do not worry!

Pour over plums and put immediately into the oven

When cooked the clafoutis will 'spring back' when you touch it with your finger tips and it will also be a beautiful golden brown.






The clafoutis can then be sprinkled with the remaining sugar just to give it a little crunch and extra texture. You can eat it straight from the oven, but I usually have some left over for the next day. I just store it on the window ledge, I do not have a fridge and I think it might go soggy if you were to put it in one, so a pantry or cool place would be best.

Hope you enjoy this dish, it is simple and yet an ode to the fine organic ingredients and succulent seasonal fruit.


Please feel free to comment, ask questions and share.

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from an old farmhouse in Normandie,

Sue

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© 2014 Sue Cross

Gâteaux de crêpes, Torta di Crispelle, Pancake Gâteaux Recipe for a hot and cold maincourse/party dish.

Despite the name gâteaux de crêpes, I first found the idea for a pancake gâteaux in an Italian cookbook and have always known it as Torta di crespelle. In France it is often seen, layered with smoked salmon and seafood on a Wedding banquet menu. Our local organic butcher produces them, ready-made for the traditional New Year's Eve dinner and by an amazing co-incidence I ate one last week at a retirement get together.  It's an impressive looking dish, of anything from 8 to 20 pancake layers, sweet or savoury, hot or cold and guaranteed to get a few oohs and aahs from the guests, even though it's normally purchased and yet it is one of the very simplest of dishes to make.

Just down the road and around the bay is Brittany, with a crêperie on every corner and considered as the spiritual home of the pancake. In Breton restaurants they serve the crêpe, wheat pancakes for dessert and the galette or buckwheat pancakes, with savoury fillings. Yet for all that, pancakes and therefore probably the pancake 'cake' started life in Italy, in the Vatican to be precise. According to legend, Pope Gelasius is supposed to have ordered simple, flat, fried 'cakes' to be served to hungry French pilgrims, who had travelled to Rome to celebrate the feast of Candlemas. This festival of lights, which marked the end of Old Christmas, was itself a transformation of the earlier feast of Lupercalia, which was later to become la fête des crêpes in France.

 

So under the inspiration of the windmill from which the above photo was taken, as it gently milled organic buckwheat flour for a whole flock of galettes, I will proceed with the ingredients:

200g - 1⅔  cups - 7 oz of plain white flour

2 or 3 eggs depending on the size

500ml - 16 fl.oz or just under 1 pint of milk ( we use rice or raw)
salt and pepper to taste
butter

 

Make a well in the flour and drop the eggs into it, working inwards with a fork or hand mixer to incorporate the flour and form a smooth paste. Slowly add the milk, whilst continuing to mix and thereby preventing the batter from becoming lumpy. Season to taste and leave the batter to stand. This process allows the air to escape, thus avoiding holy pancakes. If you have the time, you can leave the batter in a cool place overnight but otherwise try to set the batter aside for at least 15 minutes before using. This mixture makes from 10 to 16 pancakes, depending on the size of the pan but there are no real set rules in this dish, even six pancakes with substantial layers of filling will make an impressive cake.

Put frying pan on hot plate, melt a knob of butter in pan, coat base of pan with melted butter. Using a soup ladle pour some mixture into the frying pan, whilst using the other hand to move the batter until it thinly coats the bottom of the pan. 















Leave to cook but use a spatula to lift the batter at the edges, now and again, just to see how it is progressing. 

Turn the pancake over using a spatula or, if you are feeling brave, flip it over with a quick flick of the wrist. As you can see above, we needed this particular batter in a hurry and had no time to leave it to repose, hence the tell-tale tiny holes. 

Store the pancakes in the warming drawer, unless of course you are making a cold pancake gâteaux . 

I like to make a mixture of cold and hot fillings usually salad vegetables, from the garden with layers of lightly fried prosciutto or Parma ham or jambon de Paris. This makes for a very chic dinner party presentation.


 

The paradox being,  I can get the heels of both hams, i.e. the bits that will no longer go into the slicer or make elegant cuts, from my organic butcher for less than a quarter of the usual price.


Et voilà, a dish that looks impressive enough to suggest you spent hours in preparation.  I usually put my cake together at the last minute, that way the salad stuff stays crisp and fresh even though surrounded by warm pancake. Delicate items such as nasturtiums, lettuce and other such edible flowers and leaves are better left to crown the whole. 

You can have great fun with this recipe playing with flavours, colours and textures. My finished version above, includes two layers of one of our favourite home-grown exotics - sweet potato leaves, these have been lightly sautéed in butter with a little red onion.


Hope you enjoyed this recipe, please share and if you have any, comments, questions or observations, do not hesitate to ask.

All the very best and thanks for dropping by, Sue

Return to 'WHAT'S ON THE MENU' for more Simply Organic Recipes

© 2014 Sue Cross

How to freeze raw, organic cows' milk and crème fraîche

All milk is not the same, even if it is raw, organic and grass-fed and when you can get the best, you want to hang on to every last drop. Although, living in France, we can get hold of raw milk easily, I've always toyed with the idea of freezing both milk and cream but this Summer, the long spell of hot weather convinced me I needed to find out how to go about it.

These Normandes are part of the herd belonging to the local organic dairy farm, where I buy grain for our chickens. We also buy their raw milk and crème fraîche, which is made in the dairy every Thursday.

A2 and A1 type diary cows

The Normandy cow is presumed to have descended from cows brought over by invading Vikings, who settled and farmed here in the tenth century. These beautiful and docile animals along with the wheaten coloured Froment du Léon, are thought to have given birth to one of the most famous A2 breeds, the Guernsey. Some 5,000 years ago a mutation occurred in the milk solids of dairy herds, in particular in the beta-casein chain of amino acids at position number 67. Cows without the mutation are known as A2 and those with the mutation, such as the Holstein race, are called A1. If you want to delve into the fascinating subject of ancient cattle breeds, amino acids, A1 & A2 milk and the implication on health then try this link as a starting point ¹.

(Pictured above left) A beautiful Froment du Léon at this year's Organic Salon at Guichen, Brittany.

Freezing milk as ice cream

The very best milk comes with the new grass in early Spring, so it's then I tend to make large batches of ice-cream to last us the Summer long. On the left  is dark mocha chocolate and rose petal ripple, this year's invention.

Freezing milk as milk

Raw milk actually doesn't really go 'off' it just turns into something else but if you want milk for coffee or tea, then freezing seems a great option. All the books I looked at and websites I visited, informed me that milk had to be homogenised to freeze, which raw of course is not. However, I finally found the answer on the Simple Foody blog² . The answer is amazingly simple, the milk just needs to be blended prior to freezing or when it is thawing.  

All the blender does is distribute the cream more evenly but it still comes to the surface again as it freezes. However, when you heat it gently it does not come out as the 'chunky milk' you get if you freeze it without blending. Some people blend before freezing, some on defrosting, personally we have found it better to blend before.
 

To make for ease of use, we freeze it in containers and then cut it into usable slices. These can then be used directly as needed or as I do with my own eggs, I freeze in portions for recipes.  So, if you live in a State or country where you can not buy raw milk but you can go across the border and bring back a large volume, this could be a great way of getting your daily elixir. 

Freezing crème fraîche

The crème fraîche we get from the farm, is so thick the spoon will stand up in it and I was told I should be careful blending or whisking it as it would turn into Chantilly. If you have thinner crème fraîche, then I would think of whipping it before freezing.

 

Again, we froze it in containers and cut it into slices. I just left it to thaw in the open in the Kitchen










It looked no different thawed than it did when it went into the freezer.

Here I used it to accompany a foraged fruit crumble of blackberries, elderberries and bullaces.

If you live in a country where it is illegal to sell raw milk then your alternative, other than buying on-line, is to get yourself a cow-share or, as my sister did, get yourself a housecow or a couple of cows. Here they all are on my recent visit back to Scotland. Meet the very friendly, easy to handle, rare-breed and giving A2 milk; Shetlands, Marilyn and Daisy:

...and here's another of our films made on the organic farm from where we get our milk, it shows us helping to get in the cows for milking and how to make cream and butter.

 

All the best and thanks for dropping by, Sue, Daisy and Marilyn

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Rich Vanilla Ice Cream - Victorian Recipe GLUTEN FREE

The Victorians, including the Queen, had a very sweet tooth, so I've cut the amount of sugar in half. This is also because all the ingredients are organic and I find organic sugar...read more

¹
http://www.westonaprice.org/thumbs-up-reviews/devil-in-the-milk
²
http://www.simplefoody.org/freezing-raw-milk

© 2013 Sue Cross